Pagina's

Remember when our very own EU Commissioner, Neelie Smit-Kroes (p) swore to us that the EU was not this big moloch of a burocracy? That, if anything, it was the size about as large as the administration of a medium city?

Open Europe is calling bullshit. It turns out that if you add up all the employees of all the EUnion agencies you end up with a figure of aroudn 170,000 people. One hundred and seventy thousand... That's not a medium city administration. That is a medium city! The 10th largest municipality of the Netherlands (out of a total of 443) is Nijmegen (number of inhabitants: 160,907 in 2007). The EUnions army of apparatchicks is larger then that.

Royal Dutch Shell, the large Dutch-Anglo multinational sports a mere 108,000 employees. Philips, the Dutch electronics giant, makes due with a paltry 125,500. Only Unilever, arguably the largest Dutch multinational, tops the EUnion. But only by a mere 4,000 employees.